It's called what? Why?

[Kew]

I have recently re-discovered a hand written 'book' put together by a family member way back in the '30's. Where he got all this from I don't know, but it's an explanation as to why trees, shrubs and flowers are named as they are. It seems most are named after their finder.
A brief quote from the work goes like this;

'Crepis is said like kre-pis. It's a Greek word and it means a soft shoe like a sandel. It comes up every year and it will stand a frost no doubt. The red one is called Rubra and is said like Roo-bra. There's one bearded sort and that's called Barbata and is said like Bar-ba-ta.'

This is a direct copy, as written with a little detail of the plant. I've italicised the emphisis where he underlined and used heavy pressure on his pen.
There must be hundreds of entries, I'm going through them now. If you have a plant name you would like a little info on....(I'm not guaranteeing accuracy) then let me know and if it's not here I'll search it out for you elsewhere.
If there's enough interest we might open a heading for this.
Over to you.

[ideasguy]

This work needs to be documented electronically, so heres a suggestion.
How about setting up a new Gardener profile (= Family Member) in Flower Genie, add a garden are called "Plants List", add a Plant profile for each plant in the document, and link the plants to the garden area.
You can add the special notes you find in the Plant data section.

If you'd like to share it, send me a copy of the CD, and I'll roll the information into the Master database.
However, I'll create a "Reviewer" profile in the Master Database and add all the records you create as Reviews - associated with this great person.
In the Master database, there can be numerous Reviewers for each plant. Reason? Because I used to come across so many different snippets of information about any one specific plant we grow - with very good reason, as plants perform differently and show their characteristics ifferently in different climatic regions.

Collectively, members here can pool photos of the plants in your database, to make it a very very useful resource.
That should keep us busy!

[Kew]

Oh! Oh!....That's something. The writing is pen & ink and pencil..! I'll work my way through it and get it into the 'puter. From there it can be sorted properly. I hope there's not too much dialect in there!
Lord knows how long a job that's going to be but it's a task worth doing and I'll keep digging into it at every opportunity.

[ideasguy]

I wonder if a scanner with OCR would work on it?
I have one, which reads printed text, from magazines etc.

Dont know if intelligent ones are around which would read handwriting though. Does anybody know?

[Kew]

..and there's two different hands here. One looks very much like my father's hand...I'll be able to tell as I go through it....if it is, then the work has been added to since 1954 and over the years.